Member

I'm not. It saddens me that you run away. You're usually quite levelheaded, but in this thread, you've really dropped the ball. Not only have you confused yourself over what your OP is about, but on top of that, you refuse to admit it.

Or maybe Microsoft does not see the need of touting secret sauces this time, because they have the hardware advantage. Last time, they did try similar bs, with "our system engineers are the best, you don't think we would give PlayStation that much of a tech advantage" and "power of the cloud". This "more efficient" and "higher performance" smokescreen stuff you keep making up is just a sad display. PS5 will likely be cheaper and have shorter loading times, with exclusive games benefiting from what follows for streaming data. Other than that it will be the noticably weaker system. Why does that seem to be so hard to grasp with such an obvious disadvantage in every regard except I/O?

GAF's Pleasant Genius

Or maybe Microsoft does not see the need of touting secret sauces this time, because they have the hardware advantage. Last time, they did try similar bs, with "our system engineers are the best, you don't think we would give PlayStation that much of a tech advantage" and "power of the cloud".

This "more efficient" and "higher performance" smokescreen stuff you keep making up is just a sad display. PS5 will likely be cheaper and have shorter loading times, with exclusive games benefiting from what follows for streaming data. Other than that it will be the noticably weaker system. Why does that seem to be so hard to grasp with such an obvious disadvantage in every regard except I/O?

First of all there are legitimate debates around the approach taken and how much the advantage is.
If someone said “well yes, virtualisation may take a small small hit but you will be laughing when BC becomes the topic next time a new box is out” they would have been right. If they said “for compute heavy workloads, improvements to PS4 ACE aside, having shared SRAM between CPU and GPU can raise the efficiency and ease of coding of such algorithm thanks to SRAM reduced latency” they would have been right.

There is a world of difference from that and saying “and this means our box is much faster than yours in the end”.
Not sure why people are feeling the need to be over selling a 14% on paper gap: “much much stronger” “noticeably weaker” etc... etc... either.

The bit that does bring, admittedly it is console warrish, a chuckle is seeing the slow RAM and fast RAM from a manufacturer who supposedly was pulling no punches and had 200% the backing of the infinitely rich MS pockets ...

GAF's Pleasant Genius

People can make mistakes and change their minds... surely he was not the only one not agreeing on being able to use SSD as virtual memory.
One thing we can agree on is that once you do use it as such two things matter: seek times/latency and throughput/bandwidth.

It is just basically a very similar situation to last time around. This power differential will lead to similar results for multi platform games: Slightly worse performance or resolution (or both, but each to a lesser extent) on PS5 when compared to Xbox SX. If this important to you, then you will need to get an XSX, if it is negligible to you, then there is no reason for you to care much. I bought the Xbox One over the PS4 last time, so obviously, I personally do not think this disparity is particularly important, but grasping for straws by exaggerating to a comic degree technical marketing talk of one company is just plain ridiculous.

Detailled discussions about advantages and disadvantages of specific design decisions are of course completely fine, but threads like this one here are just partisan fanboy bickering.

Member

Sony's SSD has lower storage capacity no matter how you slice it. It can be fast as hell, but I prefer more storage. Games are going to be bigger than ever. I always felt that 2 TB should be the bare minimum for next gen.

GAF's Pleasant Genius

It is just basically a very similar situation to last time around. This power differential will lead to similar results for multi platform games: Slightly worse performance or resolution (or both, but each to a lesser extent) on PS5 when compared to Xbox SX. If this important to you, then you will need to get an XSX, if it is negligible to you, then there is no reason for you to care much. I bought the Xbox One over the PS4 last time, so obviously, I personally do not think this disparity is particularly important, but grasping for straws by exaggerating to a comic degree technical marketing talk of one company is just plain ridiculous.

Detailled discussions about advantages and disadvantages of specific design decisions are of course completely fine, but threads like this one here are just partisan fanboy bickering.

Last time around it was: ~30-40% on paper gap on shader ops, objectively weaker async compute approach (ridiculed as well), more complex memory layout, much lower main memory bandwidth and very small GPU work RAM (ESRAM), and a higher price. It was not the same scenario.

Most of the arguing was not even evidence / theory based, it was, as you said, “MS invented DirectX, it is preposterous, secret dGPU, DX12!!!”.

GAF's Pleasant Genius

Sony's SSD has lower storage capacity no matter how you slice it. It can be fast as hell, but I prefer more storage. Games are going to be bigger than ever. I always felt that 2 TB should be the bare minimum for next gen.

That is a fair point, but neither company has infinite money to take a loss on the unit and people will not buy $800 consoles... The thing is that in time you can add more storage, you cannot increase its speed massively (consoles are built around one spec).

Member

I'm not. It saddens me that you run away. You're usually quite levelheaded, but in this thread, you've really dropped the ball. Not only have you confused yourself over what your OP is about, but on top of that, you refuse to admit it.

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt

That is a fair point, but neither company has infinite money to take a loss on the unit and people will not buy $800 consoles... The thing is that in time you can add more storage, you cannot increase its speed massively (consoles are built around one spec).

You can agree to disagree with him, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are just wrong in what you’ve been saying. Your OP is all about the ssd, whether you are aware of it or not.

The point is that they could just stick an ssd in there that is capable of 100 times faster speeds, but without additional customisations to the pipeline it would not be able to give anything like that sort of increase to loading and streaming, as the cpu in particular would bottleneck it.

Member

Member

I think Sony are aiming at a certain, specific kind of efficiency, and that might let their console punch above its weight, which may well pay off in the form of a lower price tag, better performance per dollar, and higher sales than is they had gone with a more straightforward design like Microsoft's. Anyone who thinks they just upped their clocks at the last minute or in the last year is delusional. The console was designed from the beginning to compete through higher clocks and a super-fast SSD.

I also wouldn't mischaracterize the XSX design as one of "brute force." If anything it's a clean, elegant design that looks (to my inexpert eye) very well balanced. And it is more powerful, no doubt. Anyone trying to characterize Microsoft's engineers as stupid, lazy, or inept has clearly lost the plot. After the XB1's disastrous, more esoteric design, it's no wonder they decided to go big and straightforward, and it's certainly paying dividends right now.

My take on the situation (based on a host of unsubstantiated rumors) is that Sony was aiming for an even lower BoM and a $400 pricetag, at which point, their 9-10TF machine with added enhancements looks like an absolute steal. But things haven't quite panned out the way they hoped. Now they're looking at selling for $450+ or taking a deep loss per console, which leaves them hoping that manufacturing costs come down quickly... not a bet I'd like to take in the wake of the Coronavirus.

Member

Below is one example where custom hardware was used to resolve a bottleneck and in the process save one whole CPU core. (Meaning it could be used elsewhere) When Mark is quoted as addressing all bottlenecks then that would be where the excitement from devs is coming from.IF similar bottlenecks are resolved on the GPU side then that means you won't need as many teraflops to perform the exact same operations as XSX.

I'm not saying PS5 is more powerful than XSX because of these changers but it obviously at the very least brings the two much closer together performance wise since PS5 is using (as per Mark Cerny) 'a lot of custom hardware'.

Banned

It was only a matter of time before enough people were thinking outside the box to make a thread speaking reason without fear of being laughed off the board~

Anyone who still just thinks the xbox is the leading machine purely from numbers just isn't creative enough to imagine there's a different way of building a next gen console.. before the ipod there was the minidisk player... I'm not saying xbox is using an elaboration on an antiquated approach, but if the boot fits~

How willful do you have to be to ignore the sheer novelty and unavoidable excitement of an SSD that is 100x faster than regular ones? A custom rig? You're being the guys who buy a Ford SUV from the store instead of building one of those souped up Hyundai~

Some lilting violets just don't want to walk back their kneejerk crowing..

Member

Yea, well, you might have to start saving up for a PC then. Seriously folks. this generation is going to be different as far as Sony exclusives ONLY coming out on the PS platform. I've been preaching this for nearly a year and I still don't see it discussed when people try to pinpoint the uniqueness of Sony's exclusive games. I feel like what I'm saying is going through one ear and out the other despite giving you folks accurate information. It's just not going to be like last gen anymore. The PC might not get all, but some of the ones they will be getting will matter, believe me. The signs are all over the place.

I'm not sure I want to react to it, but just one question: will Sony dump all their custom silicon (they literally have a shitload of that in PS5: SSD, audio, GPU) engineering in PS5 down the drain just to make a PC-first game?

Member

I'm not sure I want to react to it, but just one question: will Sony dump all their custom silicon (they literally have a shitload of that in PS5: SSD, audio, GPU) engineering in PS5 down the drain just to make a PC-first game?

Member

I'm not sure I want to react to it, but just one question: will Sony dump all their custom silicon (they literally have a shitload of that in PS5: SSD, audio, GPU) engineering in PS5 down the drain just to make a PC-first game?

Gold Member

Genius move. It's had the full impact it can have on ps4 at this stage. Launching on pc will show many non ps4 gamers what they're missing, will make Sony some easy money and will make even more want to play horizon 2 which will be ps5 only.

Banned

People don't see things from all the angles, way too many see SSD as "super fast hdd, nothing more".

This second dude seems to assume that "SSD can be used as RAM, so no need for more" while the point were (how I get it) that because HDDs were so slow, big parts of RAM needed to be used as cache to compensate it.

And now when SSDs are fast, we dont need as big caches as current gen (to compensate slow HDD), so only 2x the RAM can be used more efficiently into games. Like if current gen (numbers from ass) used 20% of ram to buffer the slow hdd, next gen needs 0-5% = more ram available for other things.

It is just basically a huge leap that allows next gen to use new technologies and trash old that were build to go around HDD bottle necks.

Sony's SSD has lower storage capacity no matter how you slice it. It can be fast as hell, but I prefer more storage. Games are going to be bigger than ever. I always felt that 2 TB should be the bare minimum for next gen.

It is not that simple, again because of slow HDDs. Because of how slow they are, assests could have even 200 copies around the game file, because otherwise it would take too long to fetch them. With SSD they are not needed I think.

Also 825 vs 1000 gigs, that isnt that big difference, to use that as a reason to choose the system imo. More would be better but 825 should be plenty when we can use USB hdds for ps4 games if we want to. And if xsex costs more, then that money can be spend on ps5 add-on ssd

So what does "only one / few copies of assets vs multiple/hundred of copies + 4k textures and maybe bigger worlds equal"? Could be bigger files, could be smaller or equal files.

My guess is that some games are actually smaller than current gen versions, then some are bigger but would be even bigger on current gen.

And PS5 will allow partial installations (dunno about xsex), so if it allows you to install chapter you are playing while downloading next and deleting old chapters if you choose so = again saved space.

All these aspect of next gen will built up around SSD because it is truly a game changer and people can down play it all they want, but it is like a snow ball which turns into an avalanche, SSD will affect into many things directly and indirectly

Member

All these aspect of next gen will built up around SSD because it is truly a game changer and people can down play it all they want, but it is like a snow ball which turns into an avalanche, SSD will affect into many things directly and indirectly

Again, NO ONE is downplaying HDD VS SSD. SSDs are great and we need it. BUT what we are downplaying is the speed difference from the XBOX SERIES X SSD compared to PS5 SSD.
People here think that MULTIPLATFORM games will - ONLY BECAUSE OF THE PS5 SSD - look and run better on PS5.
people honestly think that.
and In no World is this True. it’s ridiculous. No way a multiplatform dev would design a game like that. It’s ridiculous.

Member

Why people don't understand that PS and XBOX are PC in different case and system.
I really prefer to play on PC, because on FPS games it's really better to use keyboard and mouse. While I want to play some games like mortal combat etc. Im just connecting controller and playing like on PS.
Tell me why people are hyped on new PS and XBOX??

Member

Let's take a brief minute to pause this console war thread by thinking about the children forced to work for these companies. They don't care about the SSD, they probably pretty much care about eating today and hoping to get out from this hell.

That said, why can't you people be happy with the extreme luxury you live in every day of your life .

Industry Professional (Vetted)

I'm not sure I want to react to it, but just one question: will Sony dump all their custom silicon (they literally have a shitload of that in PS5: SSD, audio, GPU) engineering in PS5 down the drain just to make a PC-first game?

Member

It means that PC-centric game needs to be totally different from PS5-centric game.
Like all this custom silicon is not on PC. So either you do not use it in PS5 either, or these are vastly different code-bases with different trade-offs.

Member

You say 'substantially more powerful' but most tech experts have clearly said the differences will likely be a slightly higher frame-rate and higher resolution. You are trying to make a mole-hill into a mountain.

If Sony wanted to, they could have made the exact same console as MS for the exact same price. Why not discuss why each company made the decisions they did, rather than constantly shouting 'damage control', 'butt-hurt', etc.

In the end, Sony is trying to make the best console for a specific price (MS did as well) and they both had to make some trade-offs. The power difference only becomes interesting if they are same price and I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that they aren't.

>You say 'substantially more powerful' but most tech experts have clearly said the differences will likely be a slightly higher frame-rate and higher resolution. You are trying to make a mole-hill into a mountain.

A) I don't particularly understand why I have to listen to sources. We know the specs of both consoles, and at the end of the day they are computers, computers optimized for gaming, but computers. The difference between the two consoles is the difference between being outdated by 1-2 years.

B) Slightly is a flat out lie. We are looking at a PS4 and a half power level difference. And frankly if either console fails to get 4k at a solid framerate for most games, that console is a failure. The difference between the one x and the ps4 pro is 1.8 tfs, and we saw how large the gap could be. The difference here is bigger, FAR bigger if you consider the PS5 is only hitting double digits because of overclocking.

>If Sony wanted to, they could have made the exact same console as MS for the exact same price. Why not discuss why each company made the decisions they did, rather than constantly shouting 'damage control', 'butt-hurt', etc.

Sony made their decision for profit, MS made their decision to push tech forward and have the most powerful console on the market. We have, on multiple occasions, seen Sony get cocky after a period of success only to make decisions that baffle consumers. MS is taking a massive plunge forward, while Sony is doing a marginal upgrade.

>In the end, Sony is trying to make the best console for a specific price (MS did as well) and they both had to make some trade-offs. The power difference only becomes interesting if they are same price and I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that they aren't.

This is such a cop out. We get one new main console every 6+ years. A 50-100 dollar price difference shouldn't really be a barrier for anyone, that's a month or two of extra saving. I mean shit, if it's a hundred dollar difference, get the Series X since it will play all xbox one games anyway, and there is your price difference. When the PS4 had the ever slightest, and I mean SLIGHTEST advantage over the one, people couldn't shut up about how massive a difference 900 to 1080p was. Now a much bigger power difference is irrelevant?

>In the end, the system with the best games always wins.

I mean MS just last year went on a massive buying spree and bought a load of massively talented developers. If only half of them produce worthwhile games, we are still looking at a much closer exclusive game comparison. Not to mention MS studios like Rare that seem to be on the right track, or Halo Infinite which has the biggest budget in gaming ever, to date. Coalition seems to be getting much better at gears as well. I just don't buy it. PS5 is under powered hardware and the two developers under Sony I actually care about seem to be blowing their load this year anyway, with TLOU2 and Sucker Punches new IP. Only game I'd buy a PS5 day one for is Bloodborne 2, which I doubt.

Industry Professional (Vetted)

It means that PC-centric game needs to be totally different from PS5-centric game.
Like all this custom silicon is not on PC. So either you do not use it in PS5 either, or these are vastly different code-bases with different trade-offs.

You are smart and a developer. You know that the PS5's SSD isn't going to somehow push more pixels just because it has a 5.5G/s SSD.

The PC is going to get some really hot PS exclusives. If you work in the industry, you already know that. Speculating on whether the PC can "handle" an exclusive simply because of custom Sony hardware is wishful thinking at best. The PS5's ultimate limitation is how many expense pixels it can move to the screen at a reasonable framerate - and that's a theoretical 10.2TFLOPS.

Banned

"PS5 focus is high performance, not high power. Are people underestimating the value of the approach?"

When i read first time the title of this thread....i was thinking: i read this before...but where?

I found it

"When it is released this holiday season, Xbox Series X will set a new bar for performance, speed and compatibility, all while allowing you to bring your gaming legacy forward with you and play thousands of games from four generations."

A few months ago, we revealed Xbox Series X, our fastest, most powerful console ever, designed for a console generation that has you, the player, at its center. When it is released this holiday season, Xbox Series X will set a new bar for performance, speed and compatibility, all while allowing...

news.xbox.com

Your suggestion that MS is going FOR HIGH POWER is a STRAW MAN.
Why you are underestimating/twisting value of the MS approach?

Member

I don't care about pixels, I care about the code, who will write it and how long will it take.
Supporting 2 code paths is much more expensive than 1 (more than 2x expensive, because you need to synchronize the two approaches frequently). And these code path will be very different.
Unless, you aim to not using the custom silicon at all beyond the most naive and simple things.

Banned

He's not wrong though. You can't simply substitute SSD for GDDR6 VRAM. One is two orders of magnitude faster than the other, but the SSD and its implementation is also absolutely the most important spec for next gen when all other aspects are basically even. Better/Faster SSD = game changer. Slighly more Flops = nothing.

Industry Professional (Vetted)

I don't care about pixels, I care about the code, who will write it and how long will it take.
Supporting 2 code paths is much more expensive than 1 (more than 2x expensive, because you need to synchronize the two approaches frequently). And these code path will be very different.
Unless, you aim to not using the custom silicon at all beyond the most naive and simple things.

You *do* care about the pixels because that's what's being shown to the gamer.

Why would 2 code paths need to be used simply because of an SSD while everything else is pretty much par the course (i.e. CPU, GPU, memory pool, etc..)? Give an example of what problem you are running into.

Gold Member

I don’t think SSD is the new cloud. You’re gonna notice the difference, even if it’s just loading times initially, right off the first boot.

The question is will PS5s ultra ultra ultra fast bandwidth get fully utilized by many (or any) devs to do creative things with it. Also, the XsX storage bandwidth is still ultra fast and there are new things you can do similarly on both consoles with streaming assets and whatnot

I'm not sure if you're trolling right now. What in the two words "custom silicon" is not clear enough?
PS5 has custom silicon pretty much everywhere, except CPU and RAM. In every other component.
Even GPU has new coherency engines the "scrubbers". They put it there just for fun, I suppose?

Member

You *do* care about the pixels because that's what's being shown to the gamer.

Why would 2 code paths need to be used simply because of an SSD while everything else is pretty much par the course (i.e. CPU, GPU, memory pool, etc..)? Give an example of what problem you are running into.